State AGs Cave to Banksters

(cross posted at EconoMonitor)

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism has long been skeptical of the negotiations by the State Attorneys General and the banksters over the foreclosure frauds (see here). And while I had held out some hope that California and New York would either refuse to join, or would insist on good terms, today’s announcement of the settlement makes it clear that the banksters had their way. I expect that the US Attorney General, Eric Holder and HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan played important roles in making sure the bank frauds would only get little slaps on the wrist.

Some of the details are not clear, but apparently the 750,000 people who had their homes stolen from them will get a mere $2000 a piece in compensation. That is how this Administration values homeownership. Yep, a bankster can take your home and you might get two thousand bucks–and with that you can pay first and last month’s rent on a cheap, run-down apartment if you are willing to live in a low rent city.

It also gives you some idea of the cost of buying out 49 states: $2.75 billion. Yep, that is all that the states get out of this settlement. They’ll look the other way and let you move in, completely destroy property records and proceed to steal the homes of your citizens while destroying your economy and tax revenues–and for under 3 billion measly dollars you can buy off their chief prosecutors.

What about underwater borrowers? Well after crashing the real estate markets, the worst of the banksters have agreed to provide $3 billion for relief. How far underwater are homeowners? $700 billion. So far.

Oh, and Holder managed to get $750 million for the Federal Government. Boy is he a tough negotiator!

The deal is with the five top mortgage servicers: BofA, JPM-Chase, Wells Fargo, Citi, and Ally Financial. Notice a pattern? Yes, 4 of the top mortgage servicers are also members of the “Dirty Half Dozen” biggest banksters–all we would need to add is Goldman and Morgan-Stanley and we’d have the list of those most responsible for causing the crisis in the first place. (Yes, there were a handful of others, including Bear, Lehman, Merrill, IndyMac, and Countrywide–that either were closed or folded into one of the dirty half dozen.)  Ally is the new name of GMAC–the financial fraudster arm of GM.

The following table was provided with a draft news release. Note it totals to $40 billion; the reason was not made clear–but presumably it has to do with an estimate of indirect borrower relief from short sales and so on.

The filename of the draft press release sent to me was titled “Settlement Swiss Cheese.” I suppose that was in reference to all the holes in this mess that will allow the banksters to continue to steal homes with impunity.

Amount = $ million